This thread should be required reading for anyone thinking of moving to Taiwan with kids. I’ve lived here for three years and didn’t know a lot of information in here, particularly the smaller “country” schools catering to special needs children.
We moved to Taiwan three years ago with our then 2 and 4 year old boys. We enrolled them in a bilingual Montessori school but told the teachers to speak to them mainly in Chinese. Our oldest stayed in that school two years before entering a local first grade. We’d scouted his primary school before choosing to move into the neighborhood. It was known for being a good school, but there was no infrastructure for children learning Chinese as a second language. The faculty assured us that previous foreign students had done fine, even entering as late as the third grade (I do find that one hard to believe).
By the time our oldest son was ready for first grade his Montessori teachers felt confident in his comprehension for spoken Chinese was up to snuff. The first few weeks seemed fine but very quickly ramped up with the Bopomofo, after the first month the students were taking oral dictation for homework assignments. Prior to starting we’d spent time with our son teaching him the Bopomofo, however the usage became complex very quickly and the dictation of entire sentences overwhelmed him. After a while he was unable to complete or even understand his homework. As someone mentioned early in this thread, the math problems are in Chinese and with my limited Chinese skills I was unable to understand, much less help him with any of the assignments.
Within five weeks we hired a tutor to come five days a week to assist him with his homework. Things turned around fairly quickly and his grades started improving. We’re now in he middle of his first semester of second grade and he’s consistently getting mid 90’s on his tests. His last midterm did slip into the 80’s, the characters need to be reinforced ALL THE TIME. I do go through his assignments and ask if he understands all of the new vocabulary, there are many times when I have to look up the definitions and explain to him, even with a tutor coming over.
For anyone looking to bring their foreign child here to attend a local school, I’d say you MUST have someone who is not only fluent in the spoken language, but fully literate and able to explain the nuances of the written language. As one example among oh so many, everyday our son comes home with a new four character phrase (Chengyu). Their easy enough to look up on their own but when their embedded in a reading assignment, you can spend a lot of time chasing your tail translating the sentence.
I was just asking my sons tutor if he thought a non Chinese speaking 10 year old could come in and survive the local schools, he just shook his head and laughed. I agree with him. A kid can be a genius, picking up the spoken language rapidly but that’s just the tip of the iceberg for the elementary schools. They’re already cramming the writing in, I can’t imagine having to catch up 3-4 years of intense character memorization.
Our desire all along was to immerse our children in the language long enough that they’ll never forget to speak it and eventually put them in an international school. At this point we’re thinking our oldest should finish the 3rd grade at a minimum. If we transfer to the international school he should still have a social life that reinforces his spoken Chinese. I do pause quite often to think how nice it would be for them to be fully literate as well, something that is so much easier to accomplish as youngsters, nearly impossible for adults.
One final word about his social life in the school. He has plenty of friends, he’s VERY outgoing, often too social to the detriment of his focusing and studying. He insists that Chinese is easier than English. His teacher has been very supportive through the whole process. It wasn’t really necessary but I’ve noticed her English has picked up quite a bit in the year and a half that our son has been in her class. I suspect she may have been working to improve her own English skills to better communicate with us. His first year in school he seemed to be a little sensitive about his darker skin color (1/2 Indian, 1/4 Latino, 1/4 Swedish). I’m guessing some kids had brought it to his attention. We talked about it a fair bit and I think the other students were just not used to seeing it, now they’ve gotten over it and don’t talk about it anymore. He’s one of two non Taiwanese kids in a fairly large school, about 250 in the second grade.
Luckily we’ve had a great experience so far, but we’ve always had a plan B. It’s part of our 5 year relocation package the company will pay for our kids education, whether it be a local school or one of the international schools (TES, TAS, etc). We’ve saved the company quite a bit of cash by choosing to put our boys in local schools. It was never about the money, but a priority for us that they learn to speak Chinese. Time will come next year to renegotiate another education package. If our current arrangement were to end, we’d be out of here within six months. It’s important for us to have that option if and when we decide it’s time to switch.